This is what happened this year in Open Source (2018 edition)

Looking at the recent events in open source give us some interesting clues for the future. Especially as 2018 was one of the most important years for open source since its foundation.

More than a few of the peak moments are new shoots that suggest open source will grow in interesting and unpredictable ways. While also extending (and replenishing) its roots as a stable form of both enterprise and community innovation.

These are also the topics that pop up over and over again. At the start of 2019 I wrote that I was going to begin researching the future of open source. In the interviews conducted in the two months since I keep hearing the same themes.

Everyone seems deeply concerned with at least one of these major streams. So I thought it would be worthwhile to dig into the top ten themes that keep emerging — and ask what the major events of open source in 2018 might mean for the year (and years) ahead. Let’s go!

Open source companies acquired in record amounts

Salesforce announced in March of 2018 that it was acquiring Mulesoft for $6.5B. Then it was Adobe’s turn to announce it was acquiring Magento for $1.68B. And then SUSE got sold off to EQT for $2.5B. That’s quite a few billions right there.